Queen of the Unwanted Read online

  Ellinsoltah raised a brow. “You have trade agreements with other sovereigns?”

  Alys felt a muscle twitch in her jaw and hoped Ellinsoltah didn’t see it. The Midlands and Grunir had both sent ambassadors to Women’s Well—although neither principality was yet ready to commit to a long-term trade agreement—and of course Ellinsoltah had sent one, as well. But so far, those three were the only ones to have acknowledged that the Principality of Women’s Well even existed. She wouldn’t trade with Delnamal even had he been willing to, and had not yet received a response to her belated overture toward Prince Waldmir.

  “Not anything ongoing as of yet,” she admitted. It was perhaps too open and honest an admission to make to a sovereign of a foreign kingdom, but she hadn’t the energy to dissemble. Alys was sure the Rhozinolm ambassador had already sent his liege a full report. “I’m still awaiting official responses from Par and Khalpar, but if they’d been interested in trading, I would have heard from them by now.”

  Khalpar was too tightly tied to Aaltah to want to anger Delnamal by trading with Women’s Well, and though Par was technically an independent principality, it was for all practical purposes a vassal state of Khalpar. If Khalpar would not deal with her, then Par would not, either.

  “I have spoken with the ambassador from Grunir,” Alys continued. “The sovereign prince is understandably reluctant to make any arrangement that might anger Aaltah, but he has agreed to allow our caravans to pass through and utilize his ports.” For an extortionate fee, unfortunately, but Alys had few options if the land route was unavailable. “Despite the loss of the caravan, we have enough potions and spells to fulfill our agreement if we can find an alternative way to get them to you.”

  The reality was that with only the one trade partner, the Women’s Well Academy already had a surplus of spells and potions. Alys and her council had agreed that the Academy should therefore spend the bulk of its time researching new magic.

  “Send the caravan to Grunirswell,” Ellinsoltah said. “I’m sure one of our merchant ships can find room in its hold for some additional cargo.”

  “Let’s hope Aaltah does not suddenly have a plague of pirates off its coast,” Alys said, for any ship traveling between Rhozinolm and Grunir would have to sail by Aaltah on the way. Piracy was a perennial problem and helped keep Aaltah’s navy combat-ready at all times.

  “Yes, let’s,” Ellinsoltah agreed with a grimace. “But as much as Delnamal might like to intercept another shipment, it would not be as easy to take a ship—especially one traveling along a well-used trade route—as to attack a handful of men traveling through the Wasteland.”

  Alys conceded the point with a nod, but wasn’t entirely sure she’d put it past him to try.

  “Take heart,” Ellinsoltah said. “I believe Delnamal is already beginning to sow the seeds of his own destruction. I don’t imagine that his decision to cancel our trade agreement is meeting with a great deal of support from his wealthiest and most influential citizens. And his attempt to meet with Ambassador Rhojal in secret suggests he might not be confident he has the full support of his council. I don’t believe there’s a single man on my own council who would not have an apoplexy at the thought of my meeting with a foreign dignitary without their foreknowledge and consent, and I hardly think Delnamal’s will react much differently. A king whose royal council is not with him loses a great deal of his power.”

  Alys rubbed eyes that were suddenly tired, wishing with a painful tightening of her chest that she could have her old life back. Not so long ago, her only responsibilities had been to run her household and to take care of her children. She would give anything to go back to those days. She’d had no idea how carefree her life had been. This thought was predictably followed by the still-shocking realization that she would never see her daughter’s face again, never hear her voice, never hold her…

  Alys sucked in a deep breath, fighting to keep herself from falling off that emotional cliff. It was a battle she fought every day, and she wondered how many times she could face it before she went mad. She’d thought she’d known the depths of true grief when her husband, Sylnin, had died, but as agonizing as that pain had been, it was nothing compared to losing her daughter. And knowing that a staggering portion of the blame lay on her own shoulders.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Ellinsoltah asked with conspicuous gentleness. One glance at her face said she understood exactly what had just happened.

  Alys thought she might sink through the floor in humiliation, and she was glad she’d chosen not to invite any of her council to sit in on this conversation. She was the Sovereign Princess of Women’s Well, and she could not afford to let her emotions run away with her—especially not in front of a fellow sovereign.

  Alys swallowed a lump of grief that seemed lodged in her throat. “Forgive me,” she croaked. “It sneaks up on me every now and again with no warning.” She blinked rapidly, willing herself not to cry.

  “There is nothing to forgive.” Ellinsoltah’s eyes had a faint sheen to them. “I am all too familiar with the ways in which grief launches its sneak attacks.”

  Alys let out a shuddering breath. Ellinsoltah did indeed have all too much experience with sudden, shocking loss. But even so, Alys ended the conversation as soon as she was able. Her grief was her own burden to bear, and while she could not hide it completely, the less of it she revealed to the outside world, the better.

  * * *

  —

  Mairah had no inclination to offer Sister Norah a seat when she invited the older woman to enter her office. Norah’s face glowed with fever, and her nose was bright red from frequent blowing, and Mairah didn’t want her sneezing and coughing all over the furniture.

  “Stay by the door,” she ordered, leaning back in her chair as if that would prevent her from catching the ague that was plaguing the city of Khalwell this season. The Abbey’s stock of cold tonics was so diminished that Mairah could not allow any but the most vulnerable of her abigails to take one. Norah was old, but hers was a healthy old age so far, and she seemed unlikely to expire from something so minor. “I do hope you have some good reason for bringing your contagion into my office.”

  Hatred flared in Norah’s eyes, and Mairah half expected her nemesis to cross the room and spit in her face in hopes of making her ill. Then the hatred dulled to misery as a coughing spasm left her gasping for breath.

  “Well, come on,” Mairah said impatiently. “Say your piece and then get out.” She frowned, and almost reluctantly added, “And then you should probably go lie down. I’ll excuse you from work duties today.”

  The surprise that lit Norah’s face was almost comical.

  “Oh, don’t worry, Sister,” Mairah said with a sneer. “I still hate you. But I have enough sick abigails already without you spreading the ague throughout the Abbey.” Not to mention that if Norah’s condition worsened, Mairah might be forced to waste one of the Abbey’s precious stock of cold tonics on her, for though she had broad rights to punish her abigails, the law required her to treat any life-threatening illnesses.

  “Sister Melred has had a vision I thought you should know about,” Norah rasped. With her savaged throat and her stuffy head, her voice was almost unrecognizable.

  Hope flared in Mairah’s heart, tempered by a huge dose of mistrust. She felt certain she had frightened Norah into compliance, but she believed the older woman was more than capable of trying to deceive her. Then again, since Mairah herself was merely looking for a way to convince Jalzarnin—and through him the king—that she was making progress, she was not overly concerned about truthfulness.

  “I am intrigued,” Mairah said. “Especially since Sister Melred has supposedly already tried three times to trigger visions and come up with nothing useful.”

  Mairah suffered a tiny twinge of conscience at Sister Melred’s suffering. Having firsthand experience with the mise
ry of taking a seer’s poison—and having no particular dislike for Melred, who was quiet and unassuming—she knew what a hardship those repeated visions must have been. Then again, if she’d taken yet another poison at Norah’s behest, that meant she was one of Norah’s cultists. Mairah might not care that the girl worshipped the Mother of All, but she cared very much that she followed Norah.

  Norah bowed her head—no doubt to hide another flash of hatred in her eyes. “She took a stronger poison this time.”

  “Is that so?” Mairah asked in a tone that made Norah flinch. “I was under the impression that she’d already taken the strongest she could handle. As I ordered all of my seers to do.”

  “She took the strongest we were certain she could survive,” Norah responded. “She could very easily have died from the one she took this time. I presume even you would have found that…inconvenient.”

  Mairah studied the older woman’s face, wondering just how deeply the hatred ran. Would Norah go so far as to murder one of her own followers in order to strike at Mairah? If a second seer died from drinking too strong a poison so soon after Sister Sulrai, then Mairah might be forbidden from continuing this line of inquiry.

  “If another of my abigails should perish from a seer’s poison,” Mairah said, “rest assured that I will hold you personally responsible. I’m sure you can imagine what sort of unpleasantness would result.”

  There was no missing the flash of fear in Norah’s eyes despite her bravely lifted chin. “You can’t have it both ways, Mother Mairahsol. To comply with your orders, we must take certain risks. And Sister Melred did survive.”

  Mairah considered ordering Norah to fast once more for her impertinent attitude, but decided against it. “What did Melred see that you thought might be interesting?”

  “She saw you and me, working together, but not here in our abbey.”

  Mairah felt a brief pang of longing. While she was not technically a prisoner in the Abbey and did occasionally venture outside its walls, it was far from a common occurrence. And she certainly couldn’t imagine herself traveling outside the Abbey to work. Especially not with Norah, of all people. She tried not to let that spark of interest show, staring at Norah flatly and refusing to prompt her.

  Norah sniffled loudly. “From everything Sister Melred described about her vision, it appears we were in Women’s Well.”

  Mairah couldn’t hide her surprise this time, her eyes widening as her whole body jerked. “Women’s Well?” she said wonderingly, and was shocked by the strength of the sudden yearning that seized her. As a young girl, she had dreamed of seeing other lands, and her favorite fantasy had been that she’d marry a diplomat who would, over the course of her life, take her to each of the other kingdoms and principalities in turn. She’d abandoned that dream when she’d entered the marriage market and set her sights on becoming the wife of the man she’d hoped would be the next lord high priest, but it had hovered at the back of her mind nonetheless. Then, she’d been sent to the Abbey, and the dream had died entirely.

  Norah nodded. “It makes sense when you think of it. That Well did not exist before the Bless—Curse was cast. Clearly it is at the heart of all the changes. What better, more likely place to find a way to reverse them? Especially considering it is also rumored to be a source of never-before-seen feminine elements!”

  Even Norah, whose heart was clearly not in the effort to reverse what she’d almost called the “Blessing,” sounded excited at the prospect of visiting the strange and mysterious Well that by all rights should not exist.

  Mairah tamped down her enthusiasm. In a life that had for so long been so constrained, the idea of traveling to a new land and exploring its magic was undeniably tempting. However, it seemed terribly…convenient that Norah said both of them should travel there together. She narrowed her eyes and scanned the other woman’s face for subterfuge.

  “A suspicious mind might wonder if you are in fact trying to remove me from Khalpar so I cannot follow through on my threat to turn you in. That suspicious mind might even wonder if you intend some ill to befall me along the journey so that you can return to the Abbey and be installed as abbess in my place.” It seemed unlikely Norah could hope to get away with murdering her abbess here in the Abbey, where she would be so clearly the prime suspect. But if they were traveling in foreign lands, Norah could knife Mairah in her sleep and then flee the scene of the crime with impunity. No doubt a woman like her would be welcome in the Principality of Women’s Well, which seemed the sort of place where Mother of All worshippers would prosper.

  “I am not a murderer,” Norah retorted. “However much the idea might appeal to me in theory. Besides, I’ve known you for a long time. You would not go anywhere with me without ensuring you would have your revenge if I betrayed you.”

  Norah had certainly not intended her words to be flattering, but Mairah smiled faintly in satisfaction anyway. There was just a touch of grudging respect in her tone, and that sound was delicious to Mairah’s ears. “You can’t seriously believe either one of us would be allowed to leave the Abbey,” she said with a shake of her head. “Not to go to Women’s Well, of all places. I don’t need to be a member of the royal council to know exactly what our dear monarch must think of the place.”

  Mairah had heard Jalzarnin talk about King Khalvin often enough to know that he was even more officiously pious in private than he was in public. To a man who believed women were meant to be subjugated to men in penance for the Mother’s infidelity to the Creator, the thought of a principality where it was possible to have women both on the throne and on the royal council was a horror. Mairah did not follow the politics of the outside world beyond the occasional rumor that reached even into the isolation of the Abbey, but she doubted the king would deign to recognize Women’s Well as an independent principality.

  Norah shrugged. “I’ll admit, the vision was surprising. But you know how visions work…”

  Mairah frowned pensively. Conventional wisdom held that visions always showed a future that was possible—and that the woman who experienced the vision had the power to affect it. If Melred was telling the truth about what she saw, then some action of hers—like, for instance, telling Norah what she’d seen so that Norah would share it with Mairah—could cause it to happen.

  “If the king truly wants us to do everything in our power to reverse the Curse,” Norah said, “then he must send us to Women’s Well. Maybe he will have no wish to do so, maybe the very idea of it will offend him. But for all that you are abbess, you and I both are nothing more than a pair of Unwanted Women in an overcrowded abbey that would barely notice we were gone. If he believes there’s even the slimmest chance that a trip to Women’s Well could help us find the key to reversing the Curse, why would he hesitate to do it? He has nothing to lose.”

  “I think perhaps that you are underestimating the toxic effects of male pride. He may not miss us if we’re gone, and he may not care about our fates, but he will care if we convince him to send us to Women’s Well and he later suspects he’s been duped. And fear of that possibility may well cause him to deny us permission.”

  Norah held up both hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t know what else to tell you, then, Mother Mairahsol. I believe Melred’s vision makes it clear what we have to do.”

  Mairah cocked her head to one side. “Don’t you believe this Mother of All of yours is the power behind the Curse in the first place?”

  “I do.”

  “Then why do you think She would show you how to reverse it? Do you truly think you and your little coconspirators are that important in Her eyes?”

  Norah raised her chin. “I believe the Mother of All has a plan and that it does not involve reversing Her Blessing,” she answered with unexpected frankness. “I believe the Mother of All has a different purpose in mind for sending us to Women’s Well. But you don’t especially care if we reverse the Cu
rse or not, do you? You just want to be confirmed as abbess. In the mind of the king, the Mother of All doesn’t even exist. He believes the visions come from a Mother who is subservient to the Creator and can do naught but His will. So when we tell him of this vision, he will believe the Creator wants us to be sent to Women’s Well.” A fierce smile briefly lit her face. “It will be neither your fault nor mine if it turns out he is mistaken.”

  Mairah tapped her fingers on the edge of her desk, thinking furiously. Jalzarnin would very likely agree that the vision had to be steering them toward a reversal of the Curse. The visions might not be sent by the Creator Himself, but the doctrine clearly considered them to be sent with His permission. But Jalzarnin would only agree if he believed Melred and Norah were describing a genuine vision, which she thought him unlikely to accept without confirmation.

  “You may go now,” Mairah said with a careless wave of her hand. “I will think on what you’ve told me.”

  Mairah was glad Norah’s head was stuffed and the fever was perhaps taking the edge off her wits. For there seemed to be only one way to convince the king to send them to Women’s Well, and it was best Norah not come to that conclusion herself until it was too late.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  When the rest of her council members and even the servants had cleared out of the room, Alys moved from her traditional seat at the head of the table so that she could sit directly across from Chanlix and Tynthanal, whom she had asked to stay behind. It could be no mystery to either of them why Alys wanted the private conversation, and she could read the tension clearly on both of their faces, although the tensions were of a different flavor.

  The clench of Tynthanal’s jaw and the flash of his averted eyes spoke of anger, which had continued unabated despite his reluctant agreement to try Alys’s potions. Chanlix, on the other hand, chewed her lip and darted furtive, worried looks in Tynthanal’s direction. That the two of them still loved each other was unquestionable, but Alys could not help noticing that they were no longer as easy together as they had once been.